IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) – Why it is important?

Every day, approximately 100,000 flights take to the sky and land without incident.

For the ten-year period 2002 to 2011, 0.6 fatal accidents happened per one million flights globally. By 2018, fatal accidents per million flights decreased 16 fold since 1970, from 6.35 to 0.39, and fatalities per trillion revenue passenger kilometre decreased 54 fold from 3,218 to 59.
Since 1997 the number of fatal air accidents has been no more than 1 for every 2,000,000,000 person-miles flown.

Since pilot error accounts for between one-third and 60% of aviation accidents, advances in automation and technology could replace the aircraft pilots after eliminating the Flight Engineer.

Apart from many key regulatory authorities, IATA plays an important part in ensuring airline safety. Out of many programs it has, IOSA has been widely accepted means measuring safety standard.

So why it is this IOSA?
The IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) is the benchmark for global safety management in airlines. The IOSA certification audit is an internationally recognised and accepted evaluation system designed to assess the operational management and control systems of an airline.
Since it is a Global standard, it has saved the industry over 6400 redundant audits and continues to lead to extensive cost-savings for IOSA participating airlines.
All IATA members are registered and must remain registered in order to maintain IATA membership.

Why it is important?
Airlines are re-evaluated every two years. Registering for IOSA certification and auditing is not mandatory. Some regional small operators do not participate in IOSA audit purely because of the cost to have the audit conducted and to implement the likely required changes.

IOSA certified airlines does not mean it will not crash, but it gives the confidence to passengers that IOSA certified airline follows a standard to ensure safety.

Results reveals, that IOSA certified airlines had a crash rate three times less than those airlines without IOSA certification.

How does IATA evaluate an airline safety?
IATA adopts “Six Point Safety Strategy” as a comprehensive approach to identify organizational, operational and emerging safety issues. It has been established in close cooperation with the member airlines and Strategic Partners through the IATA Safety Group (SG) and the Operations Committee (OPC).